Technology Review: A Better Solar Collector

Here’s another screamingly cool addition to the panoply of   new solar innovations happening these days. A small  company based in Cambridge, Ma, Covalent Solar, is introducing its concept for dramatically increasing the efficiency of polysilicon photovoltaic power cells.  Specifically, their innovation places a sheet of chemically dyed glass (or plastic conceivably) over an existing PV panel. The dyed glass actually shunts a specfic wavelength of sunlight sideways..that’s right…at a 90 degree angle to the direction of travel, forcing it out the edges of the glass panel and into a PV panel waiting there. It concentrates the light and allows a much smaller PV panel to capture roughly as much as a full-sized standard PV panel. If you put this literally on top of an existin PV panel you could nearly double the efficiency of the panel alone.  Founded by researchers at MIT, Covalent Solar is a new startup and the technology is still developing, but I love the simple elegance of the idea. I can definitely see how this could work either stand alone or in conjunction with traditional PV panels.  Way effin cool.

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